A Fannie Mae survey published in mid-May found that mortgage lenders see value in appraisal modernization, specifically in the implementation of non-traditional appraisals and inspection-based appraisal waivers. However, they have several more pressing priorities when it comes to what they’re investing in. Out of 200 senior mortgage executives surveyed, who represent 188 lending institutions, 94% […]
Indecomm Global Services, a New Jersey-based mortgage automation and services provider, aims to court more lenders through its new automation-enabled origination solution, GeniusWorks, which is intended to cut the cost of middle-office origination functions: set-up, processing and underwriting. GeniusWorks operates in conjunction with Indecomm’s suite of automation solution softwares to take loan files at set-up […]
When writing about the ’80s banks and passbooks, I started to see a pattern emerge concerning customers and refinance loans and rates. They were so high; then so low. I started thinking about farming. Farmers know that you can’t keep putting the same plants in the same dirt season after season. You kill your soil. […]
Despite the turbulence in the U.S. economy fueled by inflation, international tensions and rising mortgage rates, the private-label securities (PLS) market recorded a strong first quarter, at nearly $43 billion in issuance, and is projected to finish 2022 with record volume. That $43 billion mark represents the second-highest issuance total since the global financial crisis […]
California-based nonbank mortgage lender Pennymac Financial Services will lay off 207 additional employees in June and July following a workforce reduction filing of more than 230 employees in March. According to Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notices submitted to the Employment Development Department (EDD) on April 28 and May 9, the company plans to […]
Potential homebuyers in today’s market are facing a number of challenges, including increasing mortgage rates and a sizeable supply and demand imbalance that is pushing home-price appreciation to very high levels throughout the country. MBA’s Purchase Application Payment Index (PAPI) has increased by 32% thus far this year, indicating that payments have risen much faster […]
A piece of legislation introduced in the Senate in mid-May could streamline the appraisal process for VA loans. The legislation would modernize the Department of Veteran Affairs‘ appraisal requirements by allowing desktop appraisals, and in some circumstances, waving appraisals all together. Currently, all VA appraisals must be performed in-house. If passed, the legislation, introduced by […]
Full-service lender Cherry Creek Mortgage announced Rick Hogle has joined the company as its chief revenue officer. In his new role, Hogle will manage the firm’s retail operations, overseeing growth and development of retail sales and the production network, while supporting the firm’s business channels. He’s also tasked with developing a recruiting platform to engage […]
Planet Financial Group will donate $100,000 to a project that distributes food surplus to food banks. The donation will be made to The Farmlink Project, a nonprofit organization that aims to reduce carbon emissions and save millions of pounds of fresh produce by connecting farmers to food banks. Since Farmlink launched in 2020, more than […]
Fannie Mae has executed its fifth Credit Insurance Risk Transfer (CIRT) deal of 2022, providing up to $733.3 million in mortgage-risk coverage for the private market. The transaction, CIRT 2022-5 involved a covered loan pool of 67,700 single-family mortgages with a total unpaid principal balance of about $21 billion. The loans in the pool are […]
If there’s a bet to be made on the future of the non-agency lending space, it’s that the adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) will become far more popular this year as purchase mortgages increasingly dominate a housing market pivoting to an up-rate environment. That’s the consensus forecast of a panel of non-agency industry experts who spoke at […]
Skyrocketing mortgage rates and a slowdown in new home constructions led to a drop in home purchases in April. Mortgage applications for new home purchases dropped 10.6% in April from the same period last year, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association builder application survey. Compared with last month, applications dropped by 14%. MBA estimates that about […]
A combination of persistent inflation, rising interest rates and a slowdown in global economic growth forced Fannie Mae to reduce this year’s GDP growth rate. Fannie Mae’s Economic and Strategic Research (ESR) Group dropped its projected 2022 real GDP to 1.3%, 0.8 percentage points lower than its previous forecast. It sees the second quarter of […]
Purchase mortgage rates this week averaged 5.25%, down five basis points from a week ago, as some individuals put the American homeownership dream on standby due to higher rates and surging home prices, according to the latest Freddie Mac PMMS. This time a year ago, the 30-year fixed-rate purchase rates were at 3%, the report shows. The government-sponsored […]
Nonbank mortgage lender and servicer Ocwen Financial Corp. announced on Wednesday that Sean O’Neil is joining the company as executive vice president and chief financial officer. O’Neil will start at Ocwen on June 13 to lead the firm’s global finance organization amid a challenging mortgage origination market. Before landing at Ocwen, the executive served as […]
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) published a report this week looking at how servicers fared in the second half of 2021. The report said that on average, servicers improved their call metrics, but that some servicers continue to lag behind in assisting borrowers. According to the report, which examined data provided from 16 undisclosed […]
Individuals across the country put the American dream of homeownership on standby for the week ending May 13, reducing mortgage application volume by 11% compared to the prior week, as measured by the Mortgage Bankers Association‘s (MBA’s) Market Composite Index. “Mortgage applications decreased for the first time in three weeks, as mortgage rates — despite declining […]
Private equity firm Narrow Gauge Capital (NGC) acquired Inco-Check, LLC, a provider of quality control audit mortgage software and fraud prevention services. Founded in 2000, Irvine, California-based Inco-Check leverages its proprietary web-based platform to support GSE, regulatory agency, and investor requirements. With NGC’s acquisition of Inco-Check, the company aims to enhance loan quality and prevent […]
Orchard, which operates a home-buying and selling platform, wants to expand its customer base of first-time homebuyers by helping them to make a cash-backed offer. Buy with Orchard is the firm’s first product targeted to first-time buyers that provides home shoppers with the cash needed to compete with equity-rich homeowners and investors, the company said. […]
Julia Gordon made a habit of stopping by Ed Golding’s office when he ran the agency that she now leads. During her visits, one thing stood out to Golding, who served as the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s principal deputy assistant secretary from 2015 to 2017. Gordon already possessed a vast knowledge of the […]
The rise in mortgage-related fraud over the past three years was largely due to a surge in online and mobile-only mortgage transactions. The pandemic and growing mobile channel fueled the number of fraud cases with application fraud being a key entrant point for fraudsters, a new report analyzing fraud trends suggests. Fraud costs largely came […]
Servicers’ forbearance portfolio volume dropped in April to a level below 1%, with fewer than half a million borrowers remaining with an active plan, according to the monthly Loan Monitoring Survey conducted by the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA). That’s good news after the economic impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic hit borrowers hard, making it difficult for Americans to pay […]
As banks and non-bank lenders recently released earnings for the first quarter of 2022, two things became clear: Origination volume plummeted across the board, but those that managed to muster up a good quarter benefited from servicing portfolios. As refinancing became less appealing, lenders also sold off a large portion of mortgage servicing rights (MSRs), […]
Polly, a software-as-service mortgage technology firm that operates a loan-trading platform, integrated with six mortgage insurance providers to streamline the mortgage process for loan officers and mortgage lenders. The San Francisco-based fintech will embed quoting capabilities of Arch MI, Enact, Essent, MGIC, National MI and Radian to Polly’s product and pricing engine to streamline the […]
Movement Mortgage was founded in 2008 with a mission to create a “movement of change” in the mortgage industry after one of the hardest financial episodes in American history. This mindset is still present today, as they continue to move forward to tackle some of the biggest problems in the industry today. Montell Watson, director […]
Mortgage servicing is a scale business, meaning the economics of scale can be achieved with larger servicing portfolio by spreading the fixed costs among more loans being serviced. Such scaling; however, hasn’t achieved the expected results as indicated by both the increase of servicing cost on a per-loan basis and on loans serviced on a […]
Blend Labs reported a $73.5 million loss in the first quarter, but pointed to the performance of its mortgage banking and title sectors as a positive sign for the rest of the year. The company’s revenue rose to $71.5 million, up 124% year over year, driven by $38.7 million in revenue from Title 365, which […]
Rates are rising. Refinances are falling. Inventory is contracting. Application fallouts are worsening. It’s getting harder out there. Worsening market conditions are only going to accelerate an already hyper-competitive mortgage lending industry that is still learning to adapt to post-pandemic homebuying behaviors. Technology has been the focal point of that evolution more out of necessity […]
An ebullient market for mortgage-servicing rights (MSRs) helped to buoy the profitability of at least three major nonbank lenders that are publicly traded and abated losses for a fourth, based on their recently announced first-quarter financial results. Those lenders are UWM Holdings Corp., the parent of United Wholesale Mortgage; Rocket Companies Inc., the parent of Rocket Mortgage; Home Point Capital, the […]
Home Point Capital, the parent company of wholesale lender Homepoint, continues to turn profits based on the selling of operations and assets as management adjusts the company to the shrinking mortgage market. The wholesaler reported on Thursday morning it notched a $12 million profit from January to March, a sequential decline from the $19.3 million in […]
Purchase mortgage rates this week averaged 5.30%, up three basis points from a week ago, causing homeowners’ monthly payments to increase by about one-third year-over-year, according to the latest Freddie Mac PMMS. Borrowers are showing resilience, but higher rates expected in coming months may reduce their appetite for mortgage loans. “In the months ahead, we expect monetary […]
Texas-based multichannel lender Caliber Home Loans is accusing Ohio-based CrossCountry Mortgage of executing an “illegal scheme of unfair competition” by targeting its employees, stealing trade secrets and diverting customers. The accusations are part of a lawsuit filed in May in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington in Seattle. National Mortgage News first reported the case. Caliber […]
In this hot housing market, Michigan-based wholesale lender Homepoint understands the key to originating more home loans is ensuring more sellers accept offers made by its buyers. To do that it relies on the two words sellers increasingly want to hear: “All cash.” But how does an all-cash offer benefit a mortgage lender? Dubbed the […]
Prospective homebuyers aren’t deterred by the skyrocketing mortgage rates amid a slow start to the spring home-buying season this year. The Market Composite Index, a measure of loan application volume, rose 2 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis for the week ending May 6, from the previous week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. Conventional, […]
Detroit-based Rocket Companies, the parent of Rocket Mortgage, generated a whopping $1 billion profit in the first quarter, up from $865 million the previous quarter. Compared to its main competitors, the lender seems to be in a comfortable place. United Wholesale Mortgage (UWM) reported a much lower profit of $453.2 million from January to March, buoyed by adjustments in […]
The mortgage-servicing rights (MSR) market went on a tear at the start of 2022, and that hot streak has continued into the second quarter as interest rates on 30-year fixed mortgages continue to rise — now up 2 percentage points since the start of the year and still seemingly upward bound. As rates rise, MSR prepayment speeds […]
Nonbank heavyweight loanDepot reported an unprofitable quarter largely due to a steep decline in origination volume and expense reductions that did not keep up with the rapidly changing environment. The firm said it doesn’t expect to have a profitable fiscal year, citing pressures on margins and lower market volume. The California-based company reported a net […]
Eric Hill, an Atlanta real estate agent representing a nationwide homebuilder, had a plan to help more than 100 homebuyers get mortgages. The problem: They did not qualify for the loans. Hill’s scheme, also enabled by a group of co-conspirators, caught up with him, in part because many of the loans started going south. In […]
Fast-rising interest rates hit Finance of America Companies hard in the first quarter of 2022 and the company cut almost 600 jobs compared to one year ago. Like many of its competitors, the lender reported that its traditional mortgage business saw reduced originations and margins from January to March, mainly due to a drop-off in refinance volumes […]
Fewer buyers rushed to lock mortgages last month amid a rapid climb in long-term mortgage rates, reflecting home affordability concerns, reports from Mortgage Capital Trading and Black Knight showed. Total mortgage rate locks by dollar volume were down 5% in April from the previous month, according to MCT’s monthly Mortgage Lock Volume Indices report. Compared […]
Budget-tightening constraints of inflation, higher mortgage rates, and housing price gains are constraining consumers from buying houses. Fannie Mae‘s Home Purchase Sentiment Index, which tracks the housing market and consumer confidence to sell or buy a home, dropped by 4.7 points to 68.5 in April, marking the lowest level since May 2020. Compared with the […]
Closing costs for homeowners who jumped on the refi wave in 2021 increased at less than one-third the pace of closing costs for home purchases as homebuyers had to cope with a hot market that fueled higher home-sale prices and related settlement costs. The national average closing costs for a single-family property refinance in 2021 […]
A ruling late last year by a U.S. District Court judge in Wilmington, Delaware, put the structured-finance industry on high alert because of the serious legal and financial implications it poses for the private-label securities (PLS) market. The fate of the litigation is now in the hands of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third […]
California-based nonbank mortgage lender PennyMac Financial Services’ net income dropped more than 50% in the first quarter from the same period in 2021, driven by lower profits from its production segment due to surging mortgage rates and a shrinking origination market. However, the company still reported a pretax net income of $234.5 million in the […]
Add Guild Mortgage to the list of lenders with profitability propelled by the servicing portfolio in the first quarter — a trend that will continue in the coming months, as pressure on origination margins will remain, executives believe. The California-based nonbank mortgage lender reported a $208 million net income from January to March, an increase of 393% […]